Its been a tough year for investors once again with the S&P/ASX 200, closed at 4745 points on December 31 last year and as of last Friday November 25 had fallen to 3984. A whopping 16% loss of market value (excluding dividends).

The market worked hard for the first 7 weeks of the year, driving to a high of 4939, before plunging to 4480 (almost 10%) just under a month later. We recovered quickly; hitting the year high in the second week of April, but that was to be the brightest spot of 2011.

The trend has been pretty ugly since, and we're off around 20% since that mid-April peak.

We're delighted to announce that for the second year in a row Ben & Jerry's Openair Cinema St Kilda are supporting our radio show on MTR 1377 on Sundays from 2pm by allowing us to giveaway free tickets each week for the next three weeks to a lucky caller. If people would like to know more about programming and tickets then got to: www.stkildaopenair.com.au

This Sunday we will be joined Festival Director Alex Khadra who will tell us about whats on this summer, the charities they are associated with and the launch night on Sunday the 11th of December so be sure to tune in!

Australians spent $11.2 billion dollars on poker machines in the 12 months to September 2011, down from $13.1 billion in the twelve months to September 2010 and now below the $11.7 billion spent during the Global Financial Crisis in 2008/09.

Australians are now spending less on gambling overall than they did in 2002 according to the latest Roy Morgan Gambling Monitor. For the 12 months to September 2011, Australians spent $18.5 billion dollars on all forms of gambling, down from $20.2 billion in the 12 months to December 2002.

As large and small businesses around the country cut costs to survive during these challenging economic times, thousands of people in Australia may lose their jobs. And we’re better off than people in many other countries. If you hold onto your job through this tough patch, you may still have to cope with having your hours cut back and therefore getting less pay.

What steps should you take if you’re worried about the security of your job or cut-backs? What can you do to make sure you can still cope financially through these difficult times?

Posted on Friday, November 25, 2011
From some recent feedback we are going to include each week this section called "who's done what", this will include some company announcements that we find of interest. This week. With the Thanksgiving holiday keeping North America quiet focus was unsurprisingly back on Europe and a meeting between Germany's Angela Merkel, France's Nicolas Sarkozy and Italyâs Mario Monti. In their first convergence since Monti took office earlier this month, the three leaders discussed Italyâs economic program and ways to deal with the escalating debt crisis in the region as a whole. The Euro fell approximately 50 points to 1.3325 after Merkel stated she still does not believe common European bonds are necessary and that they would send the wrong signal to the market.
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